About

RickB- Human, Artist, Fool.

Ynys Mon, UK.

The blog is called ten percent because of what Kurt Vonnegut wrote when remembering Susan Sontag - She was asked what she had learned from the Holocaust, and she said that 10 percent of any population is cruel, no matter what, and that 10 percent is merciful, no matter what, and that the remaining 80 percent could be moved in either direction.-

And I'm writing it because I need the therapy and I lust for world domination.

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Because a hotel and shopping mall will have so much richer a cultural value…(and they say Britons don’t value the arts, some small irony that if the de-polticised strain of artists had not been so successfully neutered by the likes of Tory Saatchi this might not be happening, still you pays your money and you get fucked, capital is always scheming)

Pete Doherty used to host its poetry nights, the band Hot Chip formed there, and artists from Banksy to Gavin Turk have adorned its walls and propped up its bar.

But now the Foundry, an east London gallery and pub that for more than a decade has served as a focal point for the area’s alternative art scene, seems set to be demolished after the site’s owners drew up plans for an 18-storey hotel and retail complex.

Hackney council was today expected to approve plans to pull down the building which houses the much-loved if rather ramshackle space in Shoreditch close to the edge of the City, despite protests from the gallery’s founders that it performs a vital artistic function in the London borough.

In what its supporters regard as a particularly ironic twist, the council intends to salvage a wall painted with one of the biggest Banksy murals in Britain, even as the remainder of the building is demolished. The planned redevelopment, part of the Art’otel chain, will also incorporate gallery and retail space and a spa.

Foundry founders Tracey and Jonathan Moberly expect to be evicted by April, when the site will be cleared for the construction of a circular tower block by award-winning architects Squire and Partners. The Moberlys said they were “pretty resigned” to the fact that the art space would close, and had no objections to the conduct of the architects or the developers, Park Plaza hotels. “That’s fair enough. This isn’t our building, we’ve been renting, and they have been supportive in helping us look for another premises,” said Tracey Moberly.

But the couple are angry with Hackney council, which they accused of refusing to designate the Foundry as an artistic space, which they say would require the council to seek to resettle it in other premises, preferring to refer to it in planning documents only as a pub.

The council has also specified its intention in the planning officer’s report for the “safe removal and retention of ‘Banksy’ art work” – a six-metre high painting of a rat with a knife and fork over which the building’s owners have constructed a protective wooden covering. A spokeswoman for Squire and Partners said: “The aim of the client and design team is to permanently locate the artworks on site, in one of the public galleries at ground floor – this is to be agreed with Hackney council.”

Interestingly Avatar is extremely popular outside the US, seems they are enjoying the film’s right-to-resist action which some US reviewers sort of ignore…oddly (a Tweet from Ali Abunimah today- Going west to east from Palestine to Afghanistan, every other country is occupied by US or Israel. All in between except Iran are puppets). A review of Avatar from someone who daily fights actual fascists, imperialists, corporations and racists (so drop the liberal hand wringing) most of whom get some funding from the US government-

Evo Morales, Bolivia’s socialist president, said the blockbuster movie Avatar was an inspiration in the fight against capitalism and efforts to protect the environment, Latin American media reported on Tuesday. James Cameron’s 3D blockbuster is the story of a man sent to infiltrate an alien race – tall blue creatures inhabiting Pandora – who are in conflict with humans, who want to seize their planet’s resources.

The movie, featuring lavish special effects, has reportedly made more than $1.1 billion at the box office worldwide and is likely to become the biggest grossing film in history. “There is a lot of fiction in the movie, but at the same time it makes a perfect model for the struggle against capitalism and efforts to protect nature,” Morales said, according to regional media. Morales has said he wants the Bolivian revolution to be promoted in Africa to help the continent shed the “imperialistic manacles” and nationalize its natural resources. The UN General Assembly last year declared Morales a “World Hero of Mother Earth” for his efforts to protect the environment.

Morales, 50, watched the movie on Sunday with his 15-year-old daughter. It was just his third visit to a movie theater. He said the film impressed him and he shares many of its messages. (Ht’s2 Otto& El Duderino)

And as ever-

Bolivian President Evo Morales’ 10 commandments to save the planet, life and humanity:

10-Vivir bien, no vivir mejor a costa del otro/Living well, not living better at the expense of others

First: a call to end the capitalist system. The capitalist system was inhuman and encouraged unbridled economic development. The exploitation of human beings and pillaging of natural resources must end, as should wars aimed at securing access to those resources. Also, the world should end the plundering of fossil fuels; excessive consumption of goods; the accumulation of waste; as well as the egoism, regionalism and thirst for earning where the pursuit of luxury was taking place at the expense of human beings. Countries of the south were heaped with external debt, when it was the ecological debt that needed paying.

Second, the world should denounce war, which brought advantage to a small few, he said. In that vein, it was time to end occupation under the pretext of “combating drugs”, such as in South America, as well as other pretexts such as searching for weapons of mass destruction. Money earmarked for war should be channeled to make reparations for damage caused to the Earth.Read the rest of this entry »

Three separate and independent parties have mentioned the NORAD Santa tracker to me with glowing silliness. They scowl at me like I just fist fucked Tiny Tim to death when I point out this is a PR exercise by the US military who otherwise are massacring people across the Earth with drones. They even enjoy recounting how it says he just overflew Afghanistan and Pakistan, not countries known for celebrating a Christian holiday but countries currently experiencing widespread intervention by our military, funny that eh? Here are two pictures of what a drone strike does to children-

‘But it’s Christmas‘ they say,’ be nice!‘ I am quite happy to be nice but fucking NORAD started it, when the military pushes into this season of peace on earth and goodwill to all men™ I am not the one in the wrong by pushing back. Oddly I really don’t remember much in the Bible about Jesus Hoo Haa-ing awesome air strikes. Why is it left to this atheist to remind these festive sorts that the birthday thing they are all allegedly celebrating was for a figure who other than kicking the ass of bankers was not in favour of war or summary execution by remote controlled flying robot.

A local official and a tribal source said 49 civilians, including 23 women and 17 children, were killed in that air strike. The civilian casualties sparked protests in Abyan and two people were killed by twin explosions after one such protest on Monday.

This is the way kewwwllll snuff video game young people are taught they are being heroic for playing on-

Worth a read, how neoliberals’ ignorance of science allows them to wilfully misinterpret it to support their selfish pathologies, how social Darwinists are a fraud and chimps like to hug, (the author is rather too rosy in his views of some historic leaders but those are tangental items anyway to his main points). (ht2 James)

An unnatural culture of greed and fear has brought the global economy to its knees. We need to start playing to our pro-social strengths, says Frans de Waal

The CEO of Enron – now in prison – happily applied ‘selfish gene’ logic to his human capital, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Assuming that the human species is driven purely by greed and fear, Jeffrey Skilling produced employees driven by the same motives. Enron imploded under the mean-spirited weight of his policies, offering a preview of what was in store for the world economy as a whole.

An avowed admirer of Richard Dawkins’ gene-centric view of evolution, Skilling mimicked natural selection by ranking his employees on a one-to-five scale representing the best (one) to the worst (five). Anyone with a ranking of five got axed, but not without first having been humiliated on a website featuring his or her portrait. Under this so-called ‘Rank & Yank’ policy, people proved perfectly willing to slit one another’s throats, resulting in a corporate atmosphere marked by appalling dishonesty within and ruthless exploitation outside the company.

The deeper problem, however, was Skilling’s view of human nature. The book of nature is like the Bible: everyone reads into it what they like, from tolerance to intolerance and from altruism to greed. But it’s good to realise that, if biologists never stop talking about competition, this doesn’t mean that they advocate it, and if they call genes selfish, this doesn’t mean that genes actually are. Genes can’t be any more ‘selfish’ than a river can be ‘angry’ or sun rays ‘loving’. Genes are little chunks of DNA. At most, they are self-promoting, because successful genes help their carriers spread more copies of themselves.

Like many before him, Skilling had fallen hook, line and sinker for the selfish-gene metaphor, thinking that if our genes are selfish, then we must be selfish, too. He can be forgiven, however, because even if this is not what Dawkins meant, it is hard to separate the world of genes from the world of human psychology if our terminology deliberately conflates them.

I have my doubts about the reasoning for the RATM for Xmas thing being as I love the song but this seems to trivialise it while simultaneously validating the Xmas Number One…but…. as they are giving their windfall income from the song selling to Shelter and promise a free gig if it makes it to No. 1, beating the X Factor drivel, it is worth a go (although surely a seasonal version with ‘Bah Humbug I won’t do what you tell me’ alternating with ‘Fuck You’ should be on the cards with jingle bells added, what?). Details at the Facebook page, cheapest place to buy that figures in charts is Tunetribe (no bulk purchases that will be ignored) at 49p or this arcane way of doing it for free. This is them this week doing a live performance for Radio 5-

ALLIES WITH BENEFITS by Elizabeth Wright Shapiro
“The female President of The United States falls for her old college fling, the now Prime Minister of England.”
AGENT United Talent Agency – Blair Kohan, Tobin Babst, Jay Gassner MANAGER Industry Entertainment – Jess Rosenthal
Scott Free Productions producing.

Oh Lordy No! It’s like In The Loop never happened (but Love Actually did, hmmm). Anyways, it is unfair to judge based on this pitch (but um, ‘Prime Minister of England’ do they mean Britain? I might research that a tad before principal photography Liz, after all the Scott brothers are involved, you could ask them). In fact we might be able to look forward to a climatic scene where the PM in a crotchless poodle costume commits to nuking Iran to save Israel & the US the embarrassment as Lady President fucks him relentlessly with a strap on… but enough about my weekend.